Gretal Kovach/ Dallas Morning News

Bill and Diane Hendricks keep a picture on their refrigerator of a stranger who gave his heart to save their daughter's life.

Their daughter, Lisa, was a freshman at Newman Smith High School in Carrollton when doctors discovered that her heart was enlarged and required a replacement.

"When they said the word 'transplant,' I thought I was going to die," she said. "I thought that was the end of it."

She is alive because of Craig Trujillo, a 23-year-old Desert Storm veteran from New Mexico who died in a car accident.

These days, Lisa, 24, laughs easily. She hugs her doctors during an all-day exam at Medical City Dallas Hospital, even though they deprive her of caffeine and make her run till she's exhausted.

Although a happy ending like Lisa's is still unusual, such gifts of life are becoming more common.

The Southwest Transplant Alliance, which administers organ donations in Dallas and half of Texas, recorded a 28 percent increase in deceased organ donors in 2003 – the highest increase among 59 agencies across the country.

A nationwide increase last year of 4.3 percent resulted in 550 more potentially life-saving transplants, the largest jump since 1998, the nonprofit United Network for Organ Sharing recently announced. And deaths among patients awaiting transplants fell 10.5 percent.

"We are excited and encouraged," said Anne Paschke, a network spokeswoman.

"This is the biggest increase in these donors that we've seen in a long time. A lot of different programs on a lot of different fronts are coming together."

Two of the most important factors in the increase have been educating hospital staff members and improving interactions with grieving families, said Pam Silvestri, the Southwest Transplant Alliance's community affairs director.

Strict criteria
Only 1 percent or 2 percent of the 2 million people who die in the United States each year do so in a way that allows them to be organ donors. For a donor's organs to remain viable, he or she needs to die at a hospital while a ventilator delivers a constant stream of oxygen.

A third of those 20,000 potential donors are disqualified because of transmittable ailments such as cancer or because of trauma to the organs.

The opportunity for donation was once lost in another third of cases because hospital staff members shut down ventilators before family members could be asked about donating organs, Ms. Silvestri said.

"One of the key problems facing the donation community has been making sure that the families of those medically suitable potential donors are informed that donation is a choice," she said.

Now, hospital calls to organ donation counselors are up, in part because of federal reporting mandates and advocacy by donor families and organ recipients.

Dr. Randall Friese, a trauma surgeon, meets monthly with the Parkland Memorial Hospital organ donor committee to improve donation rates.

Doctors emphasize to potential donors' relatives that every effort is made to save patients but that brain death is irreversible.

"If we can prepare the families and tell them the prognosis is poor, then when the brain death occurs, they are more ready to make those decisions," Dr. Friese said.

Once patients die, doctors call on specialists to broach the delicate topic of organ donation.

Surviving relatives consent to organ donations 50 percent to 60 percent of the time, experts estimate.

In 2001, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services started a campaign to raise donation rates at the nation's largest hospitals to 75 percent.

Area organ donor specialists employed by the Southwest Transplant Alliance are seeing rates of 80 percent or higher.

Mary Bauchert, a family services specialist with the alliance, said she often spends hours with a grieving family before mentioning organ donation.

She sometimes has to dispel fears that a donor's body will be mutilated or that doctors didn't try hard enough to save the patient.

"Families say no because they really don't understand how the process works and also because they haven't relinquished their loved one," Ms. Bauchert said.

Once a family has had time to accept the death, "we want to help them realize what good can come out of this tragic event," she said.

Donna Compton was still in shock in December when hospital staff members said her son Tommy Duane, 26, was not going to survive an accident caused by a drunken driver. Her husband, Thomas, inquired about organ donation, and their son's heart, liver and kidneys saved four lives, including a 16-year-old boy's.

"Duane liked doing things for people," Ms. Compton said. "There wasn't any question that that's what Duane would want."

His gifts to others also helped his family cope with the loss.

"We didn't want him to just be gone for nothing," his mother said. "It's helped us knowing that part of him is still living."

Ever since a kidney was first successfully transplanted in 1954, medical advances and increasing familiarity with organ transplants have made the procedures more common. Also, rising incidences of diabetes and high blood pressure have increased the demand for transplants.

Thousands waiting
Now, 84,729 people are waiting for an organ transplant in this country, twice the number recorded in 1995.

On an average day last year, 70 people received organ transplants, but 16 others died waiting.

Carmen Littlejohn of Lewisville, who had cystic fibrosis, waited two years for a double lung transplant.

She died in 2001, at the age of 28, after waiting eight weeks at the No. 1 spot on the waiting list, said her mother, Judy Littlejohn.

"It was really taxing to know that out there somewhere, there was someone who could make a difference," she said. "But it didn't happen."

Lungs suitable for a transplant became available three days after Carmen died.

When Lisa Hendricks received her heart transplant at age 14, she was the youngest person to undergo the procedure at Medical City Dallas Hospital.

Last week, she celebrated the 10th anniversary of her operation.

Since the transplant, she has graduated from college, traveled to Europe and met the pope. In 1996, she threw out the first pitch at a Texas Rangers game.

Her parents are grateful to the young man who saved their daughter's life and to the staff of Medical City Dallas.

"Both of our kids were born here, and Lisa was reborn," said her father, Bill Hendricks.